1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to game performing method for executing a given game by controlling the movements of characters constituting a character group in a game space, and by generating an image of the game space.
2. Description of Related Art
A team competing type soccer game for a player team, which a player operates, and a competitor (hereinafter referred to as “COM”) team, which a computer automatically operates, to compete in soccer in a sports ground arranged in a virtual space is known as a genre of a video game.
Eleven athlete characters belonging to the player team are composed of a player character, whose actions are operated on operation inputs by the player, and the other non-player characters, whose actions are automatically controlled by the computer. The player character can be arbitrarily selected by the player during the playing of a game, and the player character can be automatically switched according to the whereabouts of a ball. The player operates the player character at important positions to control the whereabouts of the ball, and freely uses dribbles, shots and passing to a non-player character by the player character. Thereby, the player competes with the COM team to enjoy the soccer game.
It is also known that there are some team competing type soccer games which, for example, make a player have a sense nearer to an actual game and make it possible to be contacted with the other athletes well and further make it possible to output encouraging shouts of the athletes as sounds (see, for example, JP-Tokukai-2002-325964A).
To put it concretely, when an athlete on the own side of the player character, which the player operates, keeps a ball, the positional information of all of the athletes on the competitor side and the own side at the point of time is obtained, and the distances and the directions between the player character and the other athletes are detected on the positional information. Then, an athlete existing within a prescribed area from the player character is identified, and whether the identified athlete is one on the own side or not is judged. When the athlete is one on the own side, a sound of an encouraging shout having a content at a sound level, both corresponding to the direction of the athlete, is output. When the athlete is not the one on the own side, an effective sound is output in place of the sound of the encouraging shout.
As described above, in a soccer game, a player almost freely controls a ball, the hold of which is laid by the player team, by operating an arbitrarily selectable player character, and advances the game.
However, because the athletes who are non-player characters other than the player character are always controlled by the computer, the soccer game, which is a team play, cannot be enjoyed when the actions of the non-player characters are not suitably controlled. Consequently, whether the sense of fulfillment from “having played a soccer game” can be provided or not greatly depends on the degree of the likeness of the control of the non-player characters to actual human behaviors.
However, it cannot necessarily be said that the non-player characters are sufficiently controlled in conventional soccer games.
For example, in actual soccer, as one of attacking tactics patterns from the middle board, there is a tactics pattern such that, when there is a space on the goal side of the competitor's position, an athlete keeping a ball kicks the ball toward the space, and at the same time another athlete runs into the space to receive the ball, and further the athlete sends a pass toward a further other athlete running into the center before the goal in order that the athlete running into the center may receives the pass to shoot a shot.
However, in the conventional soccer games, the control of non-player characters with the consideration of geographical power distribution situations such as spaces in the game space has not been performed. Consequently, even when a player finds a space, no non-player characters run into the space. Hence, there has been the case where the tactics pattern described above cannot be realized in a game.